SILVER Care pathway
The SILVER programme linked data from multiple agencies including healthcare, social care, criminal justice, housing and education. It explored issues around gaining consent and how agencies can develop sustainable interventions. By creating a secure corridor for data from different agencies to flow through via one platform, this provided social workers with the latest up to date information on their service users. Despite the additional complexities of the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the SILVER team delivered a ground breaking approach enabling holistic, joined up support for vulnerable families.
Based on initial findings, a data sharing system was developed that would allow early care practitioners access to family members’ medical records via the Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG), a system already used to share GP records in emergency and out of hours settings. A consent portal was designed to ensure that data sharing operated within the relevant legal frameworks and that families knew what they are agreeing to before access was enabled. Practitioner requirements were taken into consideration so that information would be relevant, readable and filterable.
To meet information governance requirements, SILVER produced a detailed care record agreement outlining which data would be provided, to be agreed by the GP practice and local authority, as well as a data sharing agreement outlining the purpose for which the local authority would use the data. The project was also required to demonstrate compliance with Clinical Risk Management standards DCB0129 and DCB0160 prior to the authorisation of data sharing agreements. These requirements were met alongside gaining consensus amongst specialists on the appropriate legal basis for information sharing in this setting, given that early help provision sits outside of statutory social care intervention.